Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times,

Richard Grenell, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as envoy for special missions, warned that NATO leaders would face backlash from the United States if they pushed to extend alliance membership to Ukraine without first boosting their own support for the embattled eastern European nation.

Amid the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war, NATO leaders have discussed steps to extend the alliance membership to Ukraine, but the alliance is still working out details of the ascension plan.

Speaking at a Jan. 23 panel discussion on Ukraine on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said the alliance is committed to extending membership to Ukraine, but still has to work out the ascension process.

“The question now of course is how this will exactly play out whenever hopefully as soon as possible,” said Rutte, a Dutch national.

Calling into the panel from California, Grenell pushed back on Rutte’s comments.

“I think you’re going to run into a big buzzsaw in America if we have the NATO secretary general talking about adding Ukraine to NATO,” Grenell said.

While Ukraine has sought NATO membership for years, the alliance’s ascension process requires the unanimous support of all current member nations. U.S. opposition alone could halt Ukraine’s membership.

Trump and his allies have raised concerns that the United States has borne the brunt of the cost of arming and sustaining Ukraine throughout the ongoing war and that the other NATO members have lagged behind alliance military spending targets.

“The American people are the ones that are paying for the defense,” Grenell said.

“You cannot ask the American people to expand the umbrella of NATO when the current members aren’t paying their fair share. And that includes the Dutch.”

NATO set a target in 2014 for each of its member nations to commit at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product to military spending. In 2023, only 11 of the alliance’s 31 members had met that spending target. The Netherlands finally hit the 2 percent target in 2024, but eight other countries are still lagging behind.

Responding to Grenell’s remarks, Rutte agreed that there is a problem with alliance members lagging behind their existing spending commitments.

Rutte then said the alliance will need to set even higher military spending targets to adjust to growing international threats and boost its arms production capabilities.

Rutte said he’s hopeful to get all alliance members past the 2 percent spending target within the coming months.

“Then we have, collectively, to move up. And we will decide on the exact number later this year, but it will be considerably more,” Rutte added.

Ukraine Negotiations

Beyond criticizing NATO allies for not bearing more of the burden of sustaining Ukraine, Trump has repeatedly indicated he would prefer to negotiate an end to the ongoing war.

In his own virtual remarks before the World Economic Forum on Thursday, Trump said, “Our efforts to secure a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine are now, hopefully, underway.”

Trump said Ukraine is ready to make a deal, and now a peace deal will depend on Russia. This week, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Trump on his return to the White House and said Russia is open to begin talks “on an equal and mutually respectful basis.”

Grenell told the WEF panel that Trump was “handed a terrible mess.”

“There are not a lot of great choices, but President Trump … has already made clear that he’s going to pressure both sides to end this,” he said.

At times on the campaign trail, Trump said he could negotiate a deal to end the fighting within 24 hours. His team has since softened that timeline for a deal.

“I would say just give President Trump a little time,” Grenell said. “He’s the best negotiator.”

Trump has threatened to impose new economic sanctions and tariffs on Russian goods if Moscow doesn’t quickly accept a deal.

Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times,

Under a revised code of conduct on online speech, the European Commission says that Big Tech signatories need to allow a network of “monitoring reporters” to regularly monitor hate speech notices.

European Commission Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen attends the first meeting of the new college of European Commissioners in Brussels, Belgium on Dec. 4, 2024. Reuters/Yves Herman

On Jan. 20, the European Commission announced that updated hate speech guidelines will be folded into the Digital Services Act (DSA).

The DSA is an EU-wide regulation that regulates the obligations of digital services.

Part of this requires social media platforms to remove, and take other specified steps to deal with, what is deemed disinformation. The DSA fully came into force in 2024.

Under the revised code, companies that are signed up must allow a network of “monitoring reporters” that are nonprofit or public entities with expertise on illegal hate speech to regularly monitor how the signatories are reviewing hate speech notices.

They will have to review at least two-thirds of hate speech notices received from monitoring reporters within 24 hours.

The EU said that the updated code of conduct, a voluntary instrument, builds on a 2016 code on “countering illegal hate speech online.”

European Commission Spokesperson Thomas Regnier told The Epoch Times by email that Facebook, Instagram, and X are among the signatories of the new code of conduct. These platforms were also part of the previous code of conduct, initiated in 2016, he said.

It was also signed by Dailymotion,  Jeuxvideo.com, LinkedIn, Microsoft-hosted consumer services, Snapchat, Rakuten Viber, TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube.

The EU also wants signatories to present “country-level data broken down by the internal classification of hate speech (such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation).”

Some of the monitoring reporters include Amnesty International Italia, German organisation HateAid, and the French Ministry of the Interior’s dedicated portal to cybercrime, PHAROS.

Big Tech

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Jan. 7. that fact-checkers are “too politically biased” and that they “destroyed more trust than they created.”

He also called Europe a place of “censorship.”

“Europe has an ever-increasing number of laws, institutionalizing censorship, and making it difficult to build anything innovative there,” he said.

Zuckerberg also told “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast that the EU had forced U.S. tech companies operating in Europe to pay “more than $30 billion” in penalties for legal violations over the past 10 or 20 years.

The commission also opened formal proceedings in December 2024 to assess whether or not Elon Musk’s X platform may have breached the DSA.

The EU has been scrutinizing the social media platform in recent weeks as Musk, now an adviser to President Donald Trump, hosted Alice Weidel, the leader of Germany’s right-wing Alternative for Germany party, in a live interview on X.

Musk also endorsed the party.

EU Debate

The announcement came before an EU debate on enforcing the DSA to “tackle illegal content, online disinformation,” and the geopolitical and economic implications of the new Trump administration.

“In Europe there is no place for illegal hate, either offline or online. I welcome the stakeholders’ commitment to a strengthened Code of conduct under the Digital Services Act. Cooperation among all parties involved is the way forward to ensure a safe digital space for all,” Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy, said in a statement.

Accompanying Virkkunen’s statement, Michael McGrath, commissioner for democracy, justice, the rule of law, and consumer protection, said that “hatred and polarisation are threats to EU values and fundamental rights and undermine the stability of our democracies.”

He claimed that the “internet is amplifying the negative effects of hate speech.”

The EPP Group, the largest and oldest group of center-right MEPS in the European Parliament, released a statement on Jan. 21 that said that “those wanting to earn money in Europe must comply with EU law.”

Andreas Schwab, EPP Group spokesman on the internal market, said, “We need to ensure that sanctions are taken without hesitation when violations are confirmed” and that “social media should not be used to foster polarisation and undermine European democracies.”

He added that the EPP Group will support a “Democracy Shield, which will include pilot projects, to tackle disinformation in all Member States.”

“We are not in the Wild West, where everything is allowed, and we are not the Chinese state that monitors everything. Freedom of speech applies, and it can be exhausting. But it does not include the right for every platform owner to do whatever,” Schwab said.

‘Very Severe Penalties’

In a 2024 report, Norman Lewis, visiting research fellow at the think tank MCC Brussels and former PwC director and former director of technology research at Orange UK, said the EU is institutionalizing laws against “hate speech” and “disinformation” that represent a “fundamental attack on free speech and democracy in Europe.”

“It is a system which institutionalizes non-accountability,“ Lewis previously told The Epoch Times.

“Platforms have to comply arguing that they have no choice if they want to continue operating in Europe.

“The fact-checkers are not accountable to anyone. In the end, the commission can claim they’re not censoring but Big Tech is, despite the fact that the commission created the environment that forces this censorship.

“If they don’t act upon it, then there are very severe penalties.”

The European Commission relies on officially designated fact-checkers, some of whom are nongovernmental organizations.

These entities flag specific pieces of content for platforms to review. Platforms are then obligated to act, either by taking down the content or investigating it further.

Elon Musk’s Starlink has rapidly expanded its presence in Africa, now operating in 15 countries as of January 2025.

Starlink provides high-speed satellite internet to remote and underserved locations, enabling connectivity in areas where traditional internet infrastructure is unreliable, expensive, or nonexistent by using a constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites.

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist’s Kayla Zhu, shows Starlink prices vs. the leading internet service provider’s price in 12 African countries, as of January 2025.

Data comes from Starlink, and various ISP website via Rest of World. The Starlink prices do not include the upfront cost of the Starlink hardware.

Is Starlink Cheaper Than Internet Providers in Africa?

Starlink is becoming increasingly affordable in Africa, with monthly plans in countries like Kenya and Zimbabwe significantly cheaper than traditional internet service providers, often at less than half the cost.

In at least five African countries specifically–Ghana, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Cape Verde–Starlink is now cheaper than the leading fixed internet service provider.

This affordability is disrupting the market, forcing traditional ISPs like Safaricom in Kenya to lower prices and increase internet speeds to remain competitive.

Despite its high-speed offerings, Starlink faces criticism from local telecommunications companies for not investing in local jobs or infrastructure.

In South Africa, negotiations are ongoing, with the government requiring Starlink to allocate at least 30% equity to local ownership by marginalized groups as a condition for licensing.

To learn more about internet infrastructure in Africa, check out this graphic that visualizes the cost of 1GB of data in various African countries.

Authored by Liz Heflin via Remix News,

Following the brutal attack that cost two people their lives yesterday, including a 2-year-old child, in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg, Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel is calling for mass deportations.

“In Bavaria, which is governed by the CSU, an Afghan in Aschaffenburg kills a toddler (2) and a good Samaritan (41) who rushed to help the child. The Afghan had previously followed the child’s daycare group. My thoughts are with the relatives and the injured. Remigration now!” wrote Weidel on X.

Im CSU-regierten Bayern tötet ein Afghane in Aschaffenburg ein Kleinkind (2) sowie einen Helfer (41), der dem Kind zur Hilfe eilte. Zuvor hatte der Afghane die Kita-Gruppe des Kindes verfolgt. Meine Gedanken sind bei den Angehörigen & Verletzten. Remigration jetzt! pic.twitter.com/Y5OeYEyg8T

— Alice Weidel (@Alice_Weidel) January 22, 2025

Yesterday, as Remix News reported, a 28-year-old Afghan man killed two people in a knife attack on a kindergarten group in a park in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria. The victims were a two-year-old boy and a 41-year-old passerby, said Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) in Aschaffenburg. Three people were injured, including a two-year-old girl.

According to Herrmann’s statements, as cited by Die Welt, initial findings indicate that the Afghan suspect stabbed a child from the kindergarten group “suddenly and deliberately” with a kitchen knife.

The 41-year-old man was allegedly trying to prevent further attacks on the children and was killed in the process. Police say other passers-by pursued the perpetrator fled on foot. A few minutes after the attack, the man was caught by police officers. The kitchen knife used in the attack was also confiscated.

“A passer-by and two colleagues tried to resuscitate (the child),” a police officer stated.

Another child still in the group’s handcart, used to transport the toddlers, was stabbed but conscious and received immediate medical assistance on-site. 

“I find this situation completely incomprehensible,” said Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann after a moment of silence. 

An initial investigation has revealed that the suspect was undergoing psychiatric treatment and was supposed to leave Germany. He had been caught at least three times in the past for violent crimes, and had been given psychiatric treatment and released each time, said the minister. In December, the district court in Aschaffenburg ordered him to be placed under supervision.

According to the state health minister, Judith Gerlach (CSU), the three injured people were treated in an Aschaffenburg hospital. The two-year-old girl suffered stab wounds to the neck, the injured adult suffered stab wounds to the upper body, and the kindergarten teacher broke her forearm in a fall.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) described the events as an “unbelievable act of terror” and assured the victims and their families of the German government’s sympathy. The authorities must now “work hard to clarify” why “the attacker” is still in the country, he said in Berlin. “I am sick of seeing such acts of violence every few weeks by perpetrators who came to us to find protection,” said the Scholz.

However, Scholz is already being slammed for allowing yet another heinous attack involving foreigners in just a matter of months. The left-wing head of the BSW, Sahra Wagenknecht, is calling the knife attack a clear signal that the government’s refugee policy has failed.

“The fact that nothing happened after Mannheim and Solingen is primarily the failure of the chancellor and his interior minister,” Wagenknecht told Politico magazine. “That makes them politically responsible for every further terrible act.”

The chancellor summoned the heads of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the Federal Criminal Police Office, and the Federal Police to the Chancellery yesterday evening. According to government sources, Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) will also attend the meeting. Scholz returned to Berlin from a trip to Paris shortly before 7 p.m.

Other ministers and politicians have also expressed their shock and sympathies.

Faeser said she was “deeply shocked” by the crime, however, as Remix News has pointed out, this has become a sad refrain from her in recent months.

CDU chairman and Union top candidate Friedrich Merz was also “deeply shocked.”

“Things cannot go on like this,” Merz said, adding, “We must and will restore law and order.”

Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder expressed his condolences on X to the relatives and those affected. Söder called the act “cowardly and despicable” and demanded a “complete investigation.”

Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) was also appalled by the act and spoke about the knife attack on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Greens’ candidate for chancellor called the attack a “terrible assassination attempt,” calling out its “brutality and perversity” and expressing his condolences to the relatives.

FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr called for a special conference of federal and state interior ministers as soon as possible. “Politicians must react to this,” Dürr told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND). It must be ensured that potential violent offenders and psychologically conspicuous people like the perpetrator from Aschaffenburg are identified and deported. “We have learned from a series of terrible events that those who have already attracted attention pose a danger,” said Dürr.

The police are also asking any witnesses to upload video recordings to a website or report relevant observations to 0800 0060322.

Read more here…

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

You can scour the Founding documents all day and find very little support for government-by-executive-order. It was not supposed to be this way.

It should not have to be this way. The President under the Constitution has a very limited role.

That said, most of the many executive orders issued by President Trump are purely restorative, a reaffirmation of core constitutional structures that had been previously ignored or overthrown. Therefore, these are not acts of executive imposition so much as deployments of power in order to give power back to the people.

In other words, most of the actions are not about the “imperial presidency.” They are about returning power to where it belongs and never should have left, namely to the U.S. Constitution and to the voters in a republican system of government.

This is why all the chatter about Trump’s use of power (“He’s behaving like a dictator!”) misses the mark. Completely.

Let’s just consider one that is near and dear to my heart: “Restoring Freedom Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” It does nothing other than restate the meaning of the very first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which proclaimed that government cannot interfere with the freedom of speech.

In recent years, plenty of government agencies have found a way around the law. They would call media outlets and social-media services, and even book retailers, and browbeat them to publish this and not that, take down posts, prioritize this content over that, delete whole groups, and ban accounts. In addition, government agencies constructed a vast web of third-party providers to make lists of approved and unapproved points of view.

This was pushed to crack down on disinformation and misinformation, as if it was the job of the federal government to decide what is what. Invariably, this was designed to bolster the industrial prospects of a particular industry. The result was a global censorship complex of astounding levels of complexity and reach. It became terrifying for everyone and deeply injurious to careers and reputations.

These practices have come under fire in a flurry of lawsuits. One court in the case of Murthy v. Missouri ended up with an injunction against federal agencies. That found its way to the Supreme Court. In the hearings, more than half the members of the court simply could not follow the arguments. Some comments even raised questions about the whole idea of free speech itself, as if the concept was somehow new. It was shocking and demoralizing.

The result of that hearing was to reject the injunction on grounds that the plaintiffs did not have standing, as if the victims of censorship themselves have no real right to redress. Now the case is again tangled up in litigation that will likely last years. Despite tens of thousands of pages of evidence, the court could not somehow find its way toward enforcing the clear law of the land.

That’s when this executive order comes into play. Someone had to enforce the law against government overreach. That someone is President Trump. His executive order reads as follows:

“The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference. Over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve. Under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’ the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate. Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.”

It continues:

“It is the policy of the United States to: (a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech; (b) ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen; (c) ensure that no taxpayer resources are used to engage in or facilitate any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen; and(d) identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.”

Great so far, so what is to be done?

“(a) No Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent may act or use any Federal resources in a manner contrary to section 2 of this order. (b) The Attorney General, in consultation with the heads of executive departments and agencies, shall investigate the activities of the Federal Government over the last 4 years that are inconsistent with the purposes and policies of this order and prepare a report to be submitted to the President, through the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, with recommendations for appropriate remedial actions to be taken based on the findings of the report.”

There we go! Was that so hard? This is what the ACLU used to believe before they went the other direction to become a nonprofit enforcer of woke ideology.

Thus is free speech seemingly restored but that is not the end of the story. The plaintiffs should be entitled to a full compensation of all litigation costs, and these should come out of the budgets of the CDC, Department of State, the National Institutes of Health, and any other agency involved in this censorship program.

Is this order enforceable? One can hope but not be certain. The institutions and money out there favoring censorship are voluminous. It is likely going to require more than a proclamation to make the First Amendment real again. Moreover, much of the prevailing censorship is now deeply embedded in algorithmic structures on Google and YouTube. No human is operating it anymore. It will take human hands to rip out the coding that makes it all possible. And keep in mind that this happens today with no direct state involvement, so it is possible that current censorship operations will continue while being technically in compliance with the order.

That is to say, this order should have been issued many years ago, since it began much earlier than four years ago. In fact, it was in full operation during the first term of Trump, likely in a way that was unbeknownst to the Trump administration. One has to admire how Trump 2.0 has made a concerted effort here to take charge and really mean it.

There are plenty of other thrilling executive orders concerning transgenderism, the World Health Organization, the Paris Climate Accord, and much more. The freeing of the January 6th prisoners is especially bold and on point, as is the glorious freeing of Ross Ulbricht.

In general, what we are seeing here is an exercise of power in order to take power away from the globalists and deep state and give it back to the people.

This is precisely what the voters wanted, for, in the end, we prefer self-government to tyranny.

It is tragic that it should require executive orders to restore what should never have been taken from the people in the first place. But that is the world in which we live, and Trump should be commended for seeing what was necessary and doing it.

*  *  *

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

One city not eager to comply with President Trump’s new immigration plans is Portland.

The city will be actively working to try and prevent its immigrants from deportations, according to a new report from KATU ABC 2. 

One immigrant who ” came to the United States from El Salvador when he was just a teenager”, Francisco Aguirre, told ABC: “I can’t imagine leaving my kids behind.”

He added: “I flee the violence there because my life, you know, was in danger, and if I stay, I will get killed. My relatives got killed back in El Salvador, and I did not have any other choice to just run away one day when I could, you know.”

Portland pastor Mark Knutson has vowed to try and protect Aguirre, calling the Augustana Lutheran Church in Northeast Portland a sanctuary.

Knutson reflected on the sacredness of sanctuary, saying,“The idea was if ICE were to dare breach this sacred space, this holy grail, and violently drag a man out of this church, with all the cellphones and technology, even back 10 years ago, can you imagine the pictures of a man being dragged?” 

The report says that the church even has an alarm system—if ICE arrives, the bell will sound.

Under President Trump, tensions at Augustana Lutheran Church have risen, fueled by his executive order prioritizing deportations of “inadmissible and removable aliens.” Trump, when asked about ICE raids, stated, “I don’t want to say when, but it’s going to happen. It has to happen.”

Knutson is organizing community action. “You’ll see this church overflowing with leaders from the community, everyday people here to stand in solidarity. That’s going to send a message to this administration that we in Oregon are not going to go for this.”

For many, deportation can mean tragedy. Aguirre, a congregant, lost his son Moses, who was killed after fleeing to El Salvador out of fear of deportation. “He was playing soccer when they shot him,” Aguirre said.

The fear of deportation has overwhelmed Portland’s immigrant community. Immigration attorney Vanesa Pancic noted, “I think my office missed 50 phone calls, missed 50 phone calls yesterday. I don’t know how you guys got through my office yesterday.”

While the timing and scope of deportations remain uncertain, Aguirre remains hopeful. “I dream of becoming a pastor to help unite people through God’s word,” he said.

In Oregon, nearly 90,000 citizens live with undocumented family members, according to a 2016 report by the American Immigration Council.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The federal government’s method of searching through information incidentally collected on U.S.-based individuals violates the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, a federal judge has ruled.

“To countenance this practice would convert Section 702 into precisely what Defendant has labeled it – a tool for law enforcement to run ‘backdoor searches’ that circumvent the Fourth Amendment,” U.S. District Judge LaShann Dearcy Hall said in the ruling, which was released on Jan. 21.

Government officials acquired information on the defendant, Agron Hasbajrami, a legal permanent resident who they arrested in 2011 and charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization. The information was gathered under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which lets authorities spy on people.

After Hasbajrami pleaded guilty, authorities disclosed that some of the evidence they used in the case was the fruit of information they obtained without a warrant under a FISA supplement called Section 207, which enables authorities to conduct surveillance on non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States.

The authorities had gathered some evidence on Hasbajrami as they targeted non-Americans believed to be located outside the country and other communications from Hasbajrami because, they said, they at one point mistakenly thought he was a non-U.S. person.

Hasbajrami moved to suppress the evidence. After the motion was denied, he pleaded guilty on the condition he be allowed to appeal the denial.

A federal appeals court in 2019 largely upheld the denial, finding that the government’s incidental collection of information on Hasbajrami as they carried out surveillance was lawful because the surveillance was lawful in the first place. The appeals court also remanded back to the district court the examination of whether the government’s so-called back door searches of the Section 702 database violated the Constitution.

Hall, in the new decision, concluded they did. While the government’s collection of the evidence was lawful, that doesn’t automatically mean the subsequent database searches were, she said.

“In other words, simply acquiring defendant’s communications under Section 702, albeit lawfully, did not, in and of itself, permit the government to later query the retained information,” Hall wrote.

“To hold otherwise would effectively allow law enforcement to amass a repository of communications under Section 702—including those of U.S. persons—that can later be searched on demand without limitation. But this approach undermines the purpose of the warrant requirement, which is ’to interpose a ‘neutral and detached magistrate’ between the citizen and ’the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime,’” Hall added.

The judge denied the remaining portion of Hasbarjami’s motion, which asked for the government to hand over the evidence it collected.

A U.S. Department of Justice spokesperson declined to comment.

An attorney for Hasbarjami did not respond to a request for comment.

Government watchdogs hailed the ruling.

“This is a major constitutional ruling on one of the most abused provisions of FISA,” Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, said in a statement.

“In light of this ruling, we ask Congress to uphold its responsibility to protect civil rights and civil liberties by refusing to renew Section 702 absent a number of necessary reforms, including an official warrant requirement for querying US persons data and increased transparency,” Andrew Crocker and Matthew Guariglia, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, added.

President Donald Trump’s nominee for CIA director, John Ratcliffe, said during his recent confirmation hearing that Section 702 provides an “indispensable national security tool” and that he opposed requiring warrants for queries of the database.

Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii, whom Trump selected as his national security adviser, also says she supports Section 702.

Section 702 has been repeatedly reauthorized by Congress, most recently in 2024.

Section 702 is set to expire on April 15, 2026.

Described as an “Asian female” in her 20s, the FBI and Seattle Police are seeking help identifying a serial bank robber linked to five Seattle heists between June 28, 2024, and January 13, 2025.

FBI spokesperson Steve Bernd noted, “Once we start seeing someone do multiple jobs or violent bank robberies, it’s something the bureau will put more priority to.”

The FBI identified the targeted banks as Wells Fargo on Queen Anne (6/28), US Bank on NE 45th (9/7), US Bank on NE 63rd (10/31), Key Bank on Holman Road (11/21), and US Bank on Edmunds (1/13), according to KOMO News.

KOMO News reports that the suspect is described as an Asian woman, 18-25 years old, 5’3″ to 5’5″, often wearing a hat and facemask. She typically handed tellers a note demanding money during the robberies. 

Help the #FBI and Seattle Police Department identify a serial bank robber. If you have information, let us know here: https://t.co/1ci6yDdaYq or call 1-800-CALL-FBI or the Seattle Police Department. pic.twitter.com/SFewsiHQlM

— FBI Seattle (@FBISeattle) January 22, 2025

Bernd said: “She’s using notes, what we call a note job, but the last one, she actually displayed a weapon. She didn’t point it at the teller, but she indicated that she had one, so that’s concerning to us because she hadn’t done that before.” 

“If that’s indicative of what she’s willing to do if the teller isn’t doing what she’s asking, that’s alarming,” he continued. 

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday, releasing additional government files associated with the assassinations of former President John F. Kennedy (JFK), former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Trump promised at his pre-inauguration rally in Washington on Jan. 19 that he would release the remaining records on the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and King in the coming days.

“That’s a big one,” Trump said while signing the order at the Oval Office.

“A lot of people have been waiting for this for years, for decades. And everything will be revealed.”

The FBI accused Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union for a period after embracing Marxism, of assassinating JFK in 1963.

Nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald as authorities were moving him from Dallas police headquarters to the county jail just two days after the assassination, stirring decades of speculation and conspiracy theories.

JFK’s assassination coincided with a period of increasing mistrust in the federal government, and many Americans still believe Oswald was part of a larger plot to kill the president.

Gallup’s most recent poll, conducted in October 2023, found that 65 percent of U.S. adults reject the theory that a lone gunman killed JFK.

Trump and former President Joe Biden previously released thousands of documents related to JFK’s death.

Roughly 99 percent of the assassination files have been released as of 2023, according to the National Archives.

However, Biden had agreed to delay the disclosure of additional records, stating the necessity of protecting “against identifiable harms to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, and the conduct of foreign relations that are of such gravity that they outweigh the public interest in disclosure.”

An ongoing and devastating avian influenza outbreak has severely dented the nation’s egg-producing hen population, driving wholesale prices into record-high territory and far surpassing the price explosion seen a few years ago when the bird flu first emerged. This is an alarming trend, and egg prices at the supermarket will likely rise further in the weeks and months ahead.

The latest wholesale data from Urner Barry shows that the price for a dozen eggs has jumped to a record high of $5.4, exceeding the previous peak of $4.65 set in December 2022. Rising wholesale prices are expected to continue pressuring supermarket prices higher.

According to the USDA’s bird flu dashboard, 15.5 million birds across the Lower 48 have been infected by avian influenza over the last 30 days.

About 20 million egg-laying hens died in the fourth quarter of 2024 because of the escalating health crisis, denting the nation’s egg-laying population. 

“Unlike in past years, in 2024, all major production systems experienced significant losses, including conventional caged, cage-free, and certified organic types,” USDA wrote in a report earlier this month. 

The end result is this: 

Well, the egg shortage is definitely real. pic.twitter.com/rI9kRqVGRR

— Brad Stephenson (@Shuttlecock) January 23, 2025

Egg update pic.twitter.com/A6P7efjpka

— Matthew Zeitlin (@MattZeitlin) January 22, 2025

tf is this shit at my grocery store? egg shortage? for real? pic.twitter.com/2Jri48UQv7

— Chaos In Roswell (@ChaosInRoswell) January 22, 2025

Apparently there’s an egg shortage now.. $10 a dozen and limits 😭 wtf man pic.twitter.com/Q66k0csxrq

— Tazz (@bitcointazz) January 22, 2025

Readers may want to consider building or purchasing chicken coops to secure their own egg supply, as shortages are expected to persist. Additionally, a growing trend among some Americans involves sourcing clean food from mom-and-pop farms or utilizing their own land for food production. It may be time for folks to shift away from toxic food supply chains controlled by mega-corporations.